'Beauty is power. The greatest power of all...'
You may know her by another of her famous mantras: ‘There are no ugly women, only lazy women.’ Certainly the life of the fascinating and ercely ambitious Helena Rubinstein ran in parallel with women’s increasing autonomy. Born in 1870, she was a staunch feminist on the one hand, creating a company for women, run by women. But she also made her fortune by fuelling the notion of women as objects of desire. Her life is chronicled in a new book by Michèle Fitoussi, in which she is boldly credited as being ‘the woman who invented beauty’. Her belief, Fitoussi explains, was that ‘a modern woman owed it to herself to have not only a good mind, but also the good looks to go with it’.
Rubinstein herself possessed both. As the eldest of eight daughters living in insalubrious streets of Cracow, poverty red her ambition. Resisting the pressure to marry and commit herself to a life of domestic drudgery, she immigrated to Australia in her early 20s. Her mother, Gitel, had instilled in the importance of looking after her complexion, and it was the jars of homemade face cream that she took to the New World that would form the basis of her success. Admired for her fair and awless skin, she began selling pots of the product (after spending months perfecting and reproducing the formula), which was rapturously received by Australian women who had hitherto made do with a more rudimentary toilette. The Crème Valaze, as it became known, earned her enough money to open her own salon in Melbourne.
Rubinstein’s desire to succeed was insatiable. From Melbourne, she opened salons in London and Paris, before establishing her status as a global player with myriad outlets in New York and the rest of the United States. She was the rst woman to intertwine the appeal of beauty with the authority of science, introducing the concept of ‘problem’ skin, which could only be remedied with the application of scienti cally rendered products. It is a model that persists in the multibillion-dollar beauty market today. The truth was that, bar a brief stint in medical school before leaving Poland, she had no academic credentials, but she was an innate marketeer. She was often pictured in a white lab coat to enhance the image of credibility.
She also had the gift of business timing. She brought out a make-up range when cosmetics were used only by prostitutes and actresses, but managed to persuade the British prime minister’s wife, Margot Asquith, to receive a makeover. Make-up soon became de rigueur and Rubinstein’s lipsticks and rouge were ying o the shelves. But her dedication took precedence over her but was entranced, in her mid-30s, by Polish-born American writer Edward Titus. She eventually accepted his proposal and they went on to have two children (Roy and Horace) but their union was a complicated one. Troubled by Titus’s in delities and Rubinstein’s stubbornness, they divorced in 1938.
Rubinstein went on to meet Prince Artchil Gourielli-Tchkonia of Georgia, 23 years her junior. Many deemed their subsequent marriage to be a publicity stunt, others that his easygoing nature balanced her tendency to be highly strung and unreasonable.
Rubinstein, who insisted on being called ‘Madame’ by staff, was a woman of many personalities. She was generous and loyal (especially to her family), employing many relatives within her empire, but she could also be difficult, fickle, even tyrannical. She also took peculiar pleasure in her lifelong rivalry with fellow cosmetics queen, Elizabeth Arden.
Left: with Elizabeth Taylor. Right; Madame in front of portraits of herself. Inset: a must-have Helena Rubinstein day cream
Part of the reason Rubinstein remains an enigma is that she kept the truth about herself closely guarded. In the countless interviews she gave, she preferred to hide her impoverished past, creating a history for herself in which she came from wealth and nobility.
Standing at only 4ft 10in, she would be unfailingly resplendent in her attire, wearing the best that her fortune could afford her. Her homes around the world were decked out in opulent style. Dior and Yves Saint Laurent were among her favourite designers, while the works of Dalí, Picasso and Matisse lined the walls of her salons.
Towards the end of her life, she had become a living legend. ‘She understood that to become an icon it was necessary to present an eternal image of oneself and propagate it as widely as possible,’ says Fitoussi. Her black hair was never allowed to grey and was always in a tight bun. Despite her beauty empire, she wore little make-up, excepting a fierce flash of red lipstick. Her complexion, of course, remained flawless. Yet behind this exterior was ‘a little lady from Cracow’, who felt she never really fitted in. She spent her time hobnobbing with ne society on both sides of the Atlantic without fully conquering the social mores, and – although she could play her foreignness up as exoticness – she was never able to escape the shadow of anti-Semitism. Her wealth was her only weapon. When she was refused permission to buy space for a new salon because the owner did not want Jews in the property, she bought the whole building. Her intellect and fervent energy were steadfast until the end, when she died from a heart attack in New York, aged 94. Her legacy lives on in her multimillion-dollar brand, of which Demi Moore is now the face. Strongest of all, though, is her influence on women’s attitudes to appearance. In Madame’s own words: ‘If you can show me a woman who doesn’t want to look young and beautiful – well, I’m afraid she isn’t in her right mind.’
Helena Rubinstein: The Woman Who Invented Beauty, by Michèle Fitoussi, is published by Gallic Books, priced £8.99.
Rubinstein herself possessed both. As the eldest of eight daughters living in insalubrious streets of Cracow, poverty red her ambition. Resisting the pressure to marry and commit herself to a life of domestic drudgery, she immigrated to Australia in her early 20s. Her mother, Gitel, had instilled in the importance of looking after her complexion, and it was the jars of homemade face cream that she took to the New World that would form the basis of her success. Admired for her fair and awless skin, she began selling pots of the product (after spending months perfecting and reproducing the formula), which was rapturously received by Australian women who had hitherto made do with a more rudimentary toilette. The Crème Valaze, as it became known, earned her enough money to open her own salon in Melbourne.
Rubinstein’s desire to succeed was insatiable. From Melbourne, she opened salons in London and Paris, before establishing her status as a global player with myriad outlets in New York and the rest of the United States. She was the rst woman to intertwine the appeal of beauty with the authority of science, introducing the concept of ‘problem’ skin, which could only be remedied with the application of scienti cally rendered products. It is a model that persists in the multibillion-dollar beauty market today. The truth was that, bar a brief stint in medical school before leaving Poland, she had no academic credentials, but she was an innate marketeer. She was often pictured in a white lab coat to enhance the image of credibility.
She also had the gift of business timing. She brought out a make-up range when cosmetics were used only by prostitutes and actresses, but managed to persuade the British prime minister’s wife, Margot Asquith, to receive a makeover. Make-up soon became de rigueur and Rubinstein’s lipsticks and rouge were ying o the shelves. But her dedication took precedence over her but was entranced, in her mid-30s, by Polish-born American writer Edward Titus. She eventually accepted his proposal and they went on to have two children (Roy and Horace) but their union was a complicated one. Troubled by Titus’s in delities and Rubinstein’s stubbornness, they divorced in 1938.
Rubinstein went on to meet Prince Artchil Gourielli-Tchkonia of Georgia, 23 years her junior. Many deemed their subsequent marriage to be a publicity stunt, others that his easygoing nature balanced her tendency to be highly strung and unreasonable.
Rubinstein, who insisted on being called ‘Madame’ by staff, was a woman of many personalities. She was generous and loyal (especially to her family), employing many relatives within her empire, but she could also be difficult, fickle, even tyrannical. She also took peculiar pleasure in her lifelong rivalry with fellow cosmetics queen, Elizabeth Arden.
Left: with Elizabeth Taylor. Right; Madame in front of portraits of herself. Inset: a must-have Helena Rubinstein day creamPart of the reason Rubinstein remains an enigma is that she kept the truth about herself closely guarded. In the countless interviews she gave, she preferred to hide her impoverished past, creating a history for herself in which she came from wealth and nobility.
Standing at only 4ft 10in, she would be unfailingly resplendent in her attire, wearing the best that her fortune could afford her. Her homes around the world were decked out in opulent style. Dior and Yves Saint Laurent were among her favourite designers, while the works of Dalí, Picasso and Matisse lined the walls of her salons.
Towards the end of her life, she had become a living legend. ‘She understood that to become an icon it was necessary to present an eternal image of oneself and propagate it as widely as possible,’ says Fitoussi. Her black hair was never allowed to grey and was always in a tight bun. Despite her beauty empire, she wore little make-up, excepting a fierce flash of red lipstick. Her complexion, of course, remained flawless. Yet behind this exterior was ‘a little lady from Cracow’, who felt she never really fitted in. She spent her time hobnobbing with ne society on both sides of the Atlantic without fully conquering the social mores, and – although she could play her foreignness up as exoticness – she was never able to escape the shadow of anti-Semitism. Her wealth was her only weapon. When she was refused permission to buy space for a new salon because the owner did not want Jews in the property, she bought the whole building. Her intellect and fervent energy were steadfast until the end, when she died from a heart attack in New York, aged 94. Her legacy lives on in her multimillion-dollar brand, of which Demi Moore is now the face. Strongest of all, though, is her influence on women’s attitudes to appearance. In Madame’s own words: ‘If you can show me a woman who doesn’t want to look young and beautiful – well, I’m afraid she isn’t in her right mind.’
Helena Rubinstein: The Woman Who Invented Beauty, by Michèle Fitoussi, is published by Gallic Books, priced £8.99.